My Underwear Are Lost

I finally got around to opening the packages from Kohl’s that I’d been tossing in the back corner of my bedroom for the last couple of weeks. I’m not sure why it took me so long to do this. Maybe it’s because it’s a hassle, the package opening. You usually need scissors, and then you have to be careful not to accidentally chop the item inside, and then you have to figure out where to hide the things if they are Christmas gifts. And as you are hiding them, the things stare at you and make you feel guilty because you are not wrapping them right away, but are shoving them in the closet where you don’t have to think about them again until later, probably not until Christmas Eve. I have never been a talented present wrapper. When I was younger (like, in my 40s), I used yards of tape and cut jagged lines in the wrapping paper, and sometimes ended up crying because I hated it so much and was terrible at it. Now that I am in my 50s, I have finally learned how to wrap a gift, but barely.

(This is also the time when I very much regret not following my own present buying advice: I know that all I should ever buy my loved ones for Christmas is “something you want, something you need, something to wear, something to read. That’s all! If I abided by that wisdom, I would only have a few things to wrap. But I have purchased more than that. Not very much more, and I’ve already finished shopping, so there’s progress there, and hope.)

I actually bought a few things for myself at the Kohl’s Black Friday online sale this year. My daughter teased me awhile back that someday I should buy underwear  “that didn’t come in a pack.”  It was past time for new ones,  and if the kind that didn’t come in a pack were on sale, so much the better.

Warning: If you do not want to read about underwear, you might want to stop reading now. I will not be offended. I would actually be grateful. Because it is a little vulnerable to write about underwear, or “unders,” as my nephews called them, or “unmentionables,” which according to one dictionary are “articles of dress not to be mentioned in polite circles.”  I think, though, that we are close enough now that we can forego some social niceties and tell the truth about things.

And the truth was that I needed new underwear.

So you will understand that I was a little surprised when I opened the final Kohl’s package and found, not my underwear, not my unmentionables, but a pair of cheetah print Isotoner ballet slippers (size M), six pairs of dangly holiday earrings (Hot chocolate mugs! Rudolph! Snowflakes!) and an assortment of bangle bracelets with snowmen, a Santa hat, a candy cane, and stars).

No underwear.

I thought, but just for a minute, that perhaps I was being put in my place and that I didn’t deserve fancy unmentionables, that the god of lingerie was teaching me a lesson. I dismissed that thought, though, and then instantly became very curious about who received my underwear. Was it the nice lady from Ohio whose earrings and slippers I received (her name was on the packing slip.) Was she as shocked as I was?

(“Here, honey, the Christmas earrings I ordered!” maybe she said to her seventh grade daughter. “Go ahead and open the package!”

“Mom? Mom! Mother! These are not earrings!”

“What? What? Oh! Holy goodness! Those are not earrings! What ARE those?”)

Thankfully, I was able to quickly connect on the phone with a helpful Kohls.com customer support person. His name was Fernando, and by the time we got everything sorted out, we were almost good friends. He called me “Miss Robin” with a heavy Spanish accent, laughed with me over how strange the whole situation was, and then started to (very kindly) repeat to me, in detail, the exact items that he would be happy to replace.

(If you are still reading, this is where the story gets a little more vulnerable. Because I didn’t just buy underwear, friends. I also bought bras. Also? What are the odds that of all the things I ordered, it would be the bras and underwear that got lost. It couldn’t have been my son’s tennis shoes. Or my daughter’s flannel shirt. Or the plush red and black checked throw. Oh no. It had to be my underwear.)

You haven’t lived until you’ve had a sweet, young customer service representative read  off  a list of the exact bras you ordered, cup size highlighted, also color, fit, and style (Back smoother? Full coverage? Wire free lift? Invisible bliss?). At one point, I had to stop him. “Yes. Yes! That is fine! All of those are fine! (even if they weren’t. I didn’t care. I couldn’t bear to hear any more).”

I think he was grateful that he didn’t have to read any more, too.

In the end, he apologized for their error, said I could keep the earrings and slippers, and efficiently had a new round of unmentionables put in the mail to me.  I hope it will be the right ones, anyway. I never did hear the entire list. They should be here in a few days.  Odds are, when they arrive, they will be exactly what I ordered. But who knows? I could receive a package with something completely unexpected. In a strange way, that makes me happy. You just never know what surprises the new day will bring.